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Paul Reig

Bio

Paul Reig is an Associate at the Markets and Enterprise Program. He leads the design and development of the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, WRI’s tool for measuring and mapping water risks. He also coordinates the working groups and companies charged with reviewing, road-testing, and applying the Aqueduct tool. See www.wri.org/aqueduct for more information.

Prior to joining WRI, Paul spent close to 4 years managing a wide range of water resources conservation and ecosystem restoration construction projects throughout the US States of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. Paul also spent time in Latin America working on environmental and social impact assessments for international energy and mining corporations.

Paul grew up in Barcelona, and holds a Master in Integrated Water Resources Management from McGill University in Montreal, a BS and MS in Environmental and Agricultural Biology from the University of Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain, as well as a Certificate in Project Management from Georgetown University. Paul is an avid sailor and enjoys spending his free time on the water

Investors need to understand a wide variety of business and market risks facing the companies in which they invest. In the 21st century, that includes water risks.

An increasing number of companies are experiencing detrimental water-related business impacts, including operational or supply chain disruptions and property damage from flooding, to name a few. These impacts can be costly--in 2011 they cost some companies up to $200 million--and have caught the attention of investors around the world.

In January, Brian Richter, director of freshwater strategies at The Nature Conservancy, spelled out four water resolutions through a thought-provoking series of blog posts. One of those resolutions was to better understand and communicate the differences between water use and water consumption. This is a particularly important issue, as there has been a lot of discussion lately about water scarcity, water stress, and the risks associated with them.

So what do ”water use” and “water consumption” mean?

“Water use” describes the total amount of water withdrawn from its source to be used. Measures of water usage help evaluate the level of demand from industrial, agricultural, and domestic users. For example, a manufacturing plant might require 10,000 gallons of freshwater a day for cooling, running, or cleaning its equipment. Even if the plant returns 95 percent of that water to the watershed, the plant needs all 10,000 gallons to operate.

“Water consumption” is the portion of water use that is not returned to the original water source after being withdrawn. Consumption occurs when water is lost into the atmosphere through evaporation or incorporated into a product or plant (such as a corn stalk) and is no longer available for reuse. Water consumption is particularly relevant when analyzing water scarcity and the impact of human activities on water availability. For example, irrigated agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water use worldwide and almost 50 percent of that is lost, either evaporated into the atmosphere or transpired through plant leaves.

This post was co-authored with Jose Carlos Lombana, co-founder of Sistemas de Captación de Agua Pluvial (SCAP).

This story is part of the “Aqueduct Sneak Peek” series. Aqueduct Sneak Peek provides an early look at how various stakeholders can use Aqueduct’s updated global water risk maps, which will be released in January 2013. Read more posts in this series.

A study by scientists at The Nature Conservancy and other institutions estimates that by 2050, more than 1 billion city dwellers may be living on less than one bathtub’s worth of water a day. While this and other water risks are undeniably troubling, they can be overcome in many cases. With the right data and innovation, entrepreneurs can turn these risks into business opportunities.

Rainwater Harvesting Solutions in Mexico City

Mexico City, the biggest metropolis in the Western hemisphere, faces significant water shortages, leaving many domestic, agricultural, and industrial users exposed to severe water-related risks. The city was built on the foundations of the Aztec capital, on the bed of Lake Texcoco. Today, centuries later, its groundwater supplies are rapidly diminishing, and it relies on a network of reservoirs and decaying infrastructure to pump in water from hundreds of miles away. Furthermore, urban growth and climate change are pushing Mexico City’s water supply to the edge. Reservoirs were dangerously low during the 2009 drought, leading the government to cut off water in some areas of the city.

With its high reliance on manufacturing, mining, and agriculture, South Africa’s economy runs on fresh water. Recent projections estimate a startling 17 percent gap between water demand and supply in the country by 2030. Even more concerning, the areas most affected, the Gauteng and Vaal River regions, are also the most economically significant: According to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, these two areas produce more than 50 percent of South Africa's wealth and supply more than 80 percent of the country's electricity requirements (more than 50 percent of all the electricity generated in Africa).

For many companies, water issues have recently migrated from corporations’ social responsibility departments to finance and risk management departments. Companies have been reporting a growing exposure to water-related risks like flooding and pollution, and many have already started to experience water-related business impacts.

This trend prompted WRI’s Markets and Enterprise Program to build a tool to help companies and investors identify water-related risks across their operations or portfolios. The tool, named the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, is based on an indicator framework that quantifies and maps different drivers of water risk, otherwise known as the Water Risk Framework. After testing this framework in various regions, WRI recently released its revised version. This updated framework will eventually be used to assess water risks in every part of the world.

We are only a few days away from the world’s largest meeting around water: the World Water Forum. The Forum will take place this month in Marseille, France, with some 24,000 participants from the private and public sectors around the globe. There will be roughly 250 sessions and panels and 100 grassroots and citizenship events over six days. These events, and the audience of decision makers and experts attending them, provide an ideal context to showcase pioneering developments and solutions around water.

Snaking across multiple international boundaries and supporting everything from villages and farms to industry and cities, the Orange-Senqu River is one of the most important natural resources in southern Africa. The complexity and significance of the Orange-Senqu basin made it a clear focus for the Aqueduct project, which aims to measure and map physical, reputational, and regulatory water risks in economically important river basins around the world.

With a prototype map for the Yellow River basin in China and global water stress maps completed, the World Resources Institute (WRI) is in the process of expanding its basin-level mapping into other basins around the world, including the Orange-Senqu.